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Outreach programme visit

Last Friday I attended my second Lords outreach programme visit. This time I went to Eston Park Sixth Form College, which is only a few miles from where I live. I spent about an hour at the college taking to the students, plus a bit extra to go on a short tour and talk to some of the other pupils.

The purpose of the programme is to talk to young people about the work in the Lords, but I also see it as a useful way to talk to young people about political engagement. This is NOT about party politics, but about helping young people to understand about the role that they can play in their communities and how they can get their view across.

I wasn’t asked about votes at 16 (which is unusual for this age group), but I was asked about just about everything else. I was asked about how I voted on a number of divisions, and how I came to make those decisions, and what the cakes in the Dining Room are like !!! I suggested that if they could find 6 young people who wanted to make the long trip south, I would take them for tea !!

I also had the chance to talk about the Public Bodies Bill (which I spoke on in a debate last week) and give them some real examples about how things work…. The Lord Speakers office provide order papers and other materials so that we have something tangible to show. I thought it was a good use of my ‘free’ Friday, and I am looking forward to the next one

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2 comments for “Outreach programme visit”

Hello Baroness Grey-Thompson;
You say
“This is NOT about party politics”
(and evidently not about the young-peoples’ work nor about their holistic-lives, neither)

“but about (the work in the House of Lords, and) the role that young people can play in their communities”

“and how they can get their view across.”

(etcetera etcetera)

So; therefore;
Neither young people
nor their parents nor their teachers nor other community-‘leaders’, nor in effect any of Britain’s social, educational and democratic systems
can be trusted to know about and to have been able to discuss by the time they reach 16 or the sixth-form
just what role they can play in their communities ?

And this had to happen ‘out of hours’ ?
by just one lone motherly-like peer sort-of ‘sneaking’ into a school’s adult classroom far-away from Parliament, to justify the House of Lords as a Workplace ?

And for the price of a free-tea for six in the Lords’ Tea Room,
to lay a cuckoo’s-egg to capture these young people’s future allegiances and votes ?

Surely small wonder none of them asked about their right or their need to vote !

————
And although the Lords had formally launched this as their Outreach Programme, it could only be accomplished on the noble baroness’s ‘day-off’ !
————-
No wonder the British People overall have become so ‘inverted’, having to soldier-on by treating their Leaders’ Habitual Life-Governance Disasters as laughing-matters and sick-jokes.
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2211M28Mar11.JSDM.

Carl.H

28/03/2011 at 9:56 pm

Congratulations on your first Year Baroness, though it’s slightly late for 23rd March but not for the anniversary of your introduction on the 29th-tomorrow.

A room full of 16 year olds on a free Friday is not my idea of fun, at least not without a translator. Were they more excited to see an Olympiad or a Baroness ?

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About the Author

Baroness Grey-Thompson

…is a successful paralympic athlete. She competed for 16 years at the highest level in her sport, winning a total of 16 medals, including 11 gold medals in five Paralympic Games. Following her retirement from competition in 2007, Baroness Grey-Thompson has played an active role in the administration of sport, becoming Vice-President of the Women’s Sports Foundation, a non-executive director of UK athletics and member of the board for the London Marathon. She is also a member of Transport for London. Baroness Grey-Thompson became a Crossbench peer in March 2010.
She lives in the north east of England and is married with one daughter.